Tramhaus are planning some big fucking things. Rotterdam’s rowdiest quintet have finally announced their long-awaited debut albumThe First Exit, which arrives on Subroutine Records September 20th. On October 2nd, they will spearhead a Rotterdam invasion at Amsterdam’s Paradiso, flanked by none other than mumble-rockers Texoprint and noise-flamethrowers Neighbours Burning Neighbours.
Following up lead single “Beech” (which references infamous Roffa watering hole Bar3), Tramhaus unleash the caustic “Once Again”: the song starts off as a bit of a slow burner, orbiting around a glorious Stone Roses-ish bassline and chugging guitars vaguely reminiscent of fellow Rotterdam dissidents Lewsberg. If you have witnessed Tramhaus wreck a stage or two with their proto punk hijinks, you know it’s only a matter of time before they inflict some serious mayhem. Lukas Jansen’s saw-toothed snarls and the haywire duel guitars of Micha Zaat and Nadya van Osnabrugge lead the way as “Once Again” accelerates in to a meteoric surge near the end.
“As an ode to the absurdism of the digital age we are living in, this music video highlights the peculiar phenomenon of people uploading uncut videos to YouTube without giving it a title or context,” the band say of the Peter Marcus-directed music video. “The result is a quick paced experimental documentary short of seemingly unrelated footage on which the audience can project their own associations, making it that the meaning derived from it may differ per spectator. It is art in its barest form, as aesthetically speaking there is no real value to it. It is like a story without text, a film without a script. It solely exists on our innate ability to create our own stories with whatever we have at hand.”
Pre-order The First Exit here. Watch and listen to “Once Again” below.
